Project record
400 pins at an inch and a half — the smallest pin in the collection
A central Ohio hockey team ordered 400 pins at 1.5 inches — below the size most trading advice recommends, and a useful reference point.
Westerville · OH · Columbus metro
- Quantity
- 400 pins
- Size
- 1.5"
Gallery
Image frames are in place with their final filenames and alt text. The binaries are held pending rights clearance and a minors review; dropping them in is a data change.
The brief
A 1.5-inch order — below the 2-inch trading floor TPC normally recommends — and the smallest pin in the sample.
How the design got made
- Beat 1Ohio youth hockey
- Beat 2400 pins at 1.5 inches
- Beat 3No banner: under the 2.0" / 1,000-pin threshold
The full account
The small end of the range
Four hundred pins at an inch and a half. That is the smallest pin in this collection, and it makes a useful reference point precisely because it sits below the size normally recommended for tournament trading.
Two inches is the working floor for trading. Below that, at a table where every kid is comparing what's on offer, small pins get passed over. That isn't a rule about quality — a 1.5-inch pin is a perfectly good pin — it's a rule about attention.
When smaller is the right call
There are good reasons to go under two inches:
- The pins are mainly for your own players and families rather than heavy trading
- You want more pins in hand for the same budget
- They're going on a lanyard or a bag rather than into a trading rotation
At 400 pins this order also sits below the 1,000-pin threshold where the free banner comes in, so the size and the quantity were both consistent with a team buying for itself rather than for a trading tournament.
Where the team is from
The team brands as Columbus. The order ships to Westerville, a northeastern suburb about fifteen miles from downtown.
We use the ship-to address for geography and the team's own name for identity — the same way a club that plays out of one town and names itself for the city stays a city team on the pin.
Specification
| Team | Columbus Mavericks |
|---|---|
| Sport | Hockey |
| Quantity | 400 |
| Size | 1.5" |
| City | Westerville |
| State | OH |
| County | Delaware County |
| Region | Columbus metro |
The banner threshold
This order sat under the threshold, so no banner was included. The line falls at 1,000 pins at 2.0 inches or larger: at that point the size step costs $0.20 more per pin — $1.07 to $1.27 — and brings a free 3ft × 6ft banner plus 100 bonus gold-metal or blackout pins with it.
Worth checking before you commit to a quantity: the bigger pin is frequently the cheaper total order.
What the customer said
No publishable customer sentence exists in this order thread, so none is shown. Everything below the header on this page is drawn from the order record itself: sizes, quantities, proof rounds and dates. Nothing here is a testimonial, and we do not write one.
Questions this order answers
Two inches or larger is the working floor for tournament trading — smaller pins get passed over. Sizes run from 2 inches up to 6.
One little league's four orders across three years show the migration in practice: they started at 1.25 inches and moved to 2.0. Larger sizes also unlock the banner threshold, which is why the bigger pin often costs less in total.
Sourced — Sizing guidance across multiple orders; Northern Virginia little league, 2022–2026